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A. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the synchronization of telecommunication devices. More particularly, the method of the present invention relates to modem synchronization. The method is readily applied to asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) modems.
B. Description of the Related Art
Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) is a communication system that operates over existing twisted-pair telephone lines between a central office and a residential or business location. It is generally a point-to-point connection between two dedicated devices. ADSL supports bit transmission rates of up to approximately 6 Mbps in the downstream direction (to a subscriber device at the home), but only 640 Kbps in the upstream direction (to the service provider/central office). ADSL connections actually have three separate information channels: two data channels and a POTS channel. The first data channel is a high-speed downstream channel used to convey information to the subscriber. Its data rate is adaptable and ranges from 1.5 to 6.1 Mbps. The second data channel is a medium speed duplex channel providing bi-directional communication between the subscriber and the service provider/central office. Its rate is also adaptable and the rates range from 16 to 640 kbps. The third information channel is a POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) channel. The POTS channel is typically not processed directly by the ADSL modemsxe2x80x94the POTS channel operates in the standard POTS frequency range and is processed by standard POTS devices after being split from the ADSL signal.
The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) Standard T1.413, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference, specifies an ADSL standard that is widely followed in the telecommunications industry. The ADSL standard specifies a modulation technique known as Discrete Multi-Tone modulation.
Discrete Multi-Tone (DMT) uses a large number of subcarriers spaced close together. Each subcarrier is modulated during training using Quadrature Phase Shift Keying, or QPSK. During normal data transmission mode, the modulation used in ADSL is Multi-level Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (MQAM). The data bits are mapped to a series of symbols in the I-Q complex plane, and each symbol is used to modulate the amplitude and phase of one of the multiple tones, or carriers.
In some ADSL transceivers, the symbols are used to specify the magnitude and phase of a subcarrier, where each subcarrier frequency corresponds to the center frequency of the xe2x80x9cbinxe2x80x9d associated with a Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT). The modulated time-domain signal corresponding to all of the subcarriers can then be generated in parallel by the use of well-known DFT algorithm called Inverse Fast Fourier Transforms (IFFT).
The symbol period in ADSL modems is relatively long compared to single carrier systems because the bandwidth available to each carrier is restricted. However, a large number of symbols is transmitted simultaneously, one on each subcarrier. The number of discrete signal points that may be distinguished on a single carrier is a function of the noise level. Thus, the signal set, or constellation, of each subcarrier is determined based on the noise level within the relevant subcarrier frequency band. The appropriate loading of each carrier is determined during initial training and analysis periods.
Because the symbol time is relatively long and is followed by a guard band, intersymbol interference is a less severe problem than with single carrier, high symbol rate systems. Furthermore, because each carrier has a narrow bandwidth, the channel impulse response is relatively flat across each subcarrier frequency band. The DMT standard for ADSL, ANSI T1.413, specifies 256 subcarriers, each with a 4.3125 kHz bandwidth. Each sub-carrier can be independently modulated from zero to a maximum of 15 bits/sec/Hz. This allows up to 60 kbps per tone. DMT transmission allows modulation and coding techniques to be employed independently for each of the sub-channels.
The sub-channels overlap spectrally, but as a consequence of the orthogonality of the transform, if the distortion in the channel is mild relative to the bandwidth of a sub-channel, the data in each sub-channel can be demodulated with a small amount of interference from the other sub-channels. For high-speed wide-band applications, it is common to use a cyclic-prefix at the beginning, or a periodic extension appended at the end of each symbol to maintain orthogonality. Because of the periodic nature of the FFT, no discontinuity in the time-domain channel is generated between the symbol and the extension. It has been shown that if the channel impulse response is shorter than the length of the periodic extension, sub-channel isolation is achieved.
Proper symbol boundary synchronization is important for optimum performance (i.e. throughput) of DMT modulation. Improper symbol alignment causes performance deterioration through poor equalizer alignment and convergence, thereby increasing intersymbol interference. If the symbol alignment error exceeds the length of equalizer support, training will fail. Thus it is important to maintain proper symbol timing during training as well as during normal operation.
The method of the present invention provides symbol timing initialization for a multi-carrier receiver. The method uses phase measurements from a plurality of the individual carriers to make an initial determination of the symbol boundary. The method measures the phases of two carriers, preferably the pilot carrier and one adjacent carrier, and, after compensating for phase xe2x80x9cdistortionxe2x80x9d associated with modulation of data onto the carrier and phase distortion imposed on the carriers by the channel, determines the symbol timing based on the phase difference between the two carriers. Because a sampling offset results in a progressive phase offset from bin to bin of a DFT, an examination of the extent of the phase offset between two known symbols yields the sampling offset, and thus the symbol frame index.